


Silence

by gooberAscendant



Category: World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Blood, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 03:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1842043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooberAscendant/pseuds/gooberAscendant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story set in the old World of Darkness that I wrote in college, and edited a little while ago. I wrote a companion story that take place on the same night, but I don't like it as much, so I may or may not edit and post it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence

Silence consumed the world. A monstrous man loomed above, his fangs dripping with blood. He stared with eyes like deep pools of nothing as he reached out a hand. Pain erupted from where he touched. Blood burst from within. His face was blank, showing no feeling, not the slightest reaction despite the unbearable suffering he caused. Silence.

Zoe awoke in a cold sweat, breathing heavily and clutching her left arm tightly in memory of the pain. She sat, catching her breath and trying to force the memories from her mind. After a minute, she stood and walked to the window across the small room. She brushed her blonde hair from her face, and stared out into the night sky from the third-story apartment. The city lights of Boston obscured the sky, but the full moon shone brightly, reflecting off of her bright blue eyes. Zoe clenched her fists. The light of the moon filled her with strength, conviction.

She had power. It was part of her. Her mother was a warrior, a soldier of nature, gifted with the wisdom of Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, and the fury of Luna, the spirit of the Moon. A shapeshifter that lived between the world of humanity and the world of the spirits. She had no father but magic. She was a mage, gifted with influence over reality; magic like that which had given her life. She could impose her will on reality. She could control space, time, matter, energy. But these powers had limits. Her own understanding of reality was limited, and her will could only change what she understood. And worse, the more she changed, the more the world reacted. The wills of billions of normal humans resisted her own. Magic was “impossible,” and the paradox of its performance was dangerous and wild.

Zoe was born of strength and magic, but she had been defenseless, weak. She had let her guard down. The next time would be different. She would be ready for the silent killer.

The door creaked open. A girl entered. Zoe tensed reflexively at the quiet, still presence, but relaxed immediately when she heard the familiar voice. “Are you alright?” It had a motherly air to it, though it belonged to a girl barely over seventeen.

“I will be,” Zoe promised herself before turning to face her old friend. Carolyn was a being in stasis, between life and death. Her appearance had remained the same since before Zoe was born. Smooth pale skin, flowing black hair, and piercing gray eyes. In the nineteen years of Zoe’s life, nothing about her friend seemed to change. She was a vampire that fed on the life of others, the same as the monster that haunted Zoe’s dreams, yet she was gentle and kind, becoming violent only in order to protect. There was more humanity in her than most of those still alive.

“My contact found him. A blood hunt was called.”

“So he’s definitely a vampire?”

Carolyn nodded. “Clan Assamite. Assassins that work for the highest bidder. Someone didn't want Max talking anymore.”

Zoe didn’t have much experience in the city. There were too many people, too much disbelief. But Carolyn had taught her everything she needed to know about vampire society. There were rules, and this assassin had broken them. He had killed another vampire, or Kindred as they called themselves, and he had revealed himself to a crowd of mortals. The blood hunt was a death sentence. He was fair game. Good. He deserved-

“Get dressed.” Carolyn interrupted Zoe’s train of thought.

“We’re going now?”

“He’s at the harbor. We don’t have much time before he leaves. Are you up to it?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure? Last time…”

“Definitely.” Zoe turned back to the window, letting the light of the moon fill her eyes again.

“Alright. Meet me downstairs.” Carolyn turned and left the room, closing the door behind her.

***********

There had been murders. Nothing special at first. But people started talking. Rumors spread on the streets that the killer was something inhuman. Investigations were made. More and more people got suspicious. They were getting close to truth, and that was dangerous. If they knew, they would be afraid. They’re belief would lessen the paradox that magic created, but the supernatural would be hunted. Even the static reality they forced on the rest of the world was better than being hunted like an animal.

Four nights ago, Carolyn had called a guy she knew - well, a vampire - that owed her a favor. Max. He owned a bar, and he knew things other people didn’t. He had contacts all over the city, human and Kindred alike. He told her he knew who the murderer was. She called in her favor for the information. If she could put a stop to this murderer, not only would a dangerous criminal be stopped, but the human investigation would find no more evidence of the supernatural.

That night, Zoe and Carolyn had left for Max’s bar. Zoe remembered it clearly. When they arrived, the place was packed. It was stifling. She could feel the consensual reality that the oblivious masses wrapped around themselves blocking original thought, and inhibiting her power.

They found Max at a table in the back. He seemed entirely average. Almost eerily so. It was hard to focus on any of his features long enough to notice anything about them. It took a minute of focusing just to realize that his hair was black. Carolyn later explained that he was using an obscuring power, often used by his clan in order to blend in with humans.

There was exchange of pleasantries, introduction, and some small talk. Then came business. Max explained that the murderer was indeed supernatural, but was no Kindred, nor mage, nor shapeshifter. He was something else entirely. But before Max could say what, the room grew silent. His lips moved, but no sound was made.

A man appeared behind Max. His skin was dark, and he wore a black leather trench coat that flowed silently behind him. He held a knife that dripped with black blood. Zoe caught his gaze just as the blade was plunged into Max’s back. She stared into an abyss. A silent oblivion. An overwhelming nothingness. Max collapsed, poisoned by tainted blood. The man leapt forward.

Everyone stared. Zoe couldn’t defend herself. That’s what they all thought they knew. They thought it, and she couldn’t deny it. There were too many. She had the power, but it was useless in the face of the cold, unchanging reality they forced on her.

The man pushed her out of his way. Effortless. She was pushed aside like she was no one. He didn’t care about her in the slightest. A meaningless motion to save a second of time. And yet it caused so much pain. With his touch, Zoe’s left arm burst from within, blood pouring out. She screamed in pain, but there was no sound. Silence. Unbearable pain. She wanted it to stop, but the people watched. Their world told her she was helpless and weak.

***********

Zoe winced and clutched her arm. The memory of that monster brought back the pain. He was heartless. He treated her like nothing, and she hated him for it. He turned her into a pathetic crying child. A worthless fly to be swatted away. But not again. This time, she would be strong. This time, he would not think her insignificant. This time, he would pay.

She finished changing. Jeans and an old T-shirt, sneakers and a black leather coat. She quickly headed out of the apartment and down the stairs. The street outside was busy. People went about their business, in their constraining fantasy world where everything was ordinary and mediocre. But it was nighttime, and they couldn’t see in the shadows. As long as she didn’t draw attention, Zoe’s power would not be suppressed.

“Did I ever tell you how I met your mother?” Carolyn stood leaning against the building behind Zoe as she stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“What? Why?” Zoe turned and raised her eyebrow at the girl.

Carolyn stood up straight and walked past Zoe. “No reason.” She looked back, smirking.

“Fine.” Zoe sighed. “No, you didn’t. She told me you weren’t always friends, though.”

“Did she say why?” Carolyn kept walking. Zoe hurried to catch up and walk along side.

“She hurt someone close to you, right?”

Carolyn nodded. “She was delusional at the time, but I was still angry when she got better.”

“Makes sense.”

“Sure. I wanted someone to blame. I couldn’t just accept that it happened, right?”

“Maybe.”

“No, dummy,” Carolyn said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Hey!” Zoe pouted.

Carolyn laughed, amused at herself. “Of course I could. I just didn’t. I was stupid."

“Fine, fine.” Zoe rolled her eyes. “So you’re stupid,” she shrugged. “I wont argue with that.”

“Hey,” Carolyn feigned offense. “I figured it out eventually.”

“Oh, really?” Zoe acted surprised.

“Yeah. I got mixed up in some bad stuff, but I got out, except for the whole Kindred deal.”

“So you got involved with vampires?”

“And a lot worse. I went looking for the power to make things right, y’know? Well I found power, alright, but it wasn’t mine. It was only used through me. I allowed myself to be an instrument of evil. I became powerless and I made nothing right. So that pretty much backfired.”

“So how’d you get back?”

“Your mother showed me the light.”

“Way to be vague.”

“Yeah, well, there was magic involved. That gets pretty vague. But I guess she kinda opened herself up to me, and showed me forgiveness. After seeing that, I couldn’t blame her anymore. The person I hated just wasn’t there.”

“Sounds like everything worked out then.”

“Yep.” Carolyn smiled.

”So what made you bring it up?”

“Why do you think people forgive?” Carolyn’s eyes were piercing. Zoe shivered reflexively again.

“Because if someone’s sorry, they deserve it…”

“Oh?”

“Well, if they’re sorry, it’s not their fault anymore. If they had the power, they’d take it back. Right?”

“And if they’re not sorry?”

Zoe was quick to answer. “Then they don’t deserve anything.”

“No. I suppose they don’t.”

***********

Zoe and Carolyn stood in the back room of a theater, a few blocks away from the apartment building. A small bastion from the mystically suffocating city. The building was built on a wellspring of magical energy. Zoe’s mother knew the owner, a shapeshifter. Now that she was in the city, Zoe used the back room for more obvious magic, in order to avoid the wrath of the physics the city was based on.

Zoe concentrated, focusing her mind on the spatial relations of reality, the correspondence of all things on the physical plane. She willed reality to shift. Space bent in on itself. Points that were once far became adjacent. The room she stood in and a back alley near the harbor were brought together. She took Carolyn’s hand, and the pair took a single step forward. Zoe released the effect. Space snapped back to the way it was before, how the masses thought space should be. The violence of this snap would have knocked Zoe clean off of her feet, but the energy she pulled from the wellspring buffered the blow, leaving it nothing more than a gentle nudge.

The mage and the vampire now stood in the alley by the harbor.

“So,” Zoe said. “where to now?”

“Hang on…” Carolyn swayed back and forth, off balance. “Let me just regain my sense of direction, and… reality… That always messes me up…”

“Beats walking.” Zoe grinned.

“But could it be any more trippy?”

“Not my fault you’re used to a world where only one thing is true at a time.”

“Is that why magic is so vague?”

“Because it’s more than one thing at once?” Zoe shrugged. “Probably. Makes sense to me, though.”

“Cut some slack for those of us whose mother wasn’t impregnated by mystical forces.” Carolyn clenched her eyes shut then opened them a few times, readjusting to her new surroundings.

Zoe waited until the other girl was done. “You good?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Carolyn made her way towards the docks, checking their position. Once she knew where they were, she headed up the harbor, towards the dock her contact had indicated. Zoe followed close behind.

“So what do you plan to do when we find this guy?” Zoe asked after a few minutes.

“He’s dangerous,” Carolyn said in a matter-of-fact tone. “He’s twisted and fearless, so we won’t find out who hired him. Unless you recently mastered the art of mental persuasion.”

“Still just an apprentice there,” Zoe said apologetically.

“So then we need to stop him.”

“Right…” Zoe planned to do much more than just stop the monster that had hurt her so badly.

They were quiet again until they reached their destination. A dock where a small freighter was being loaded by about a dozen men.

Carolyn pointed at the ship. “According to my sources, he’s in there. Can you get us in?”

“I can’t teleport us, if that’s what you mean, but I know enough about minds to make the loading crew ignore us.”

“Good.” The two walked quickly to the freighter, avoiding the dock workers. Zoe worked her will on reality again, focusing on the patterns of mental activity, causing the humans’ minds to become unable to make connections regarding the two young women that just entered their midst. They perceived, but they made no further thought concerning what they saw. A subtle enough trick to slip in through the cracks of reality.

As she passed by, Zoe continued her influence, using her knowledge of chance and entropy to make them tend towards ideas that lead them outside, further from the ship. She would not let their disbelief hinder her.

***********

Silence. Down inside the small freighter amid the shipping crates there was no sound. The silence brought the memory again. Zoe began to move her hand to her left arm, but stopped and clenched her fists.

The assassin was swift and precise, moving with inhuman speed from the shadows of the dimly-lit cargo hold and striking with his knife, dripping with the same corrupted blood as before. Carolyn saw him coming. She turned, striking his arm from above, knocking him off balance with unnatural strength. She readied another attack, but he was faster than she thought. His hand struck her chest. Blood ruptured and constricted. Had she been alive, the blood would have crushed her heart and drowned her lungs. But even though she was no longer burdened with the need for organs, the shock of the attack made her double over, coughing up some of the blood that kept her from true death. The man regained his balance and prepared to impale the stunned vampire with his knife.

Zoe reached out with her will. The man was fast. A fact of a reality she did not agree with. She pulled on the fabric of reality, altering the flow of time around the undead killer, causing him to slow in relation to the world around him. He was no longer fast. His blade swung through the air in apparent slow motion. Zoe lashed out, pulling heat from the air and turning it into kinetic energy as her foot collided with the man’s forehead.

Conservation of energy was a fabrication, but a difficult one to overcome. Conversion of one type of energy to another was much more effective.

The man flew back, appearing to accelerate into the wall of the ship as he returned to the normal flow of time.

The assassin landed on his feet, holding out his knife defensively. He had thought her inconsequential. Zoe’s lips curled into a smile at the thought of proving him wrong. She took a step forward, bending space as she did. With one step she was in front of him. He reacted quickly, striking out with his weapon repeatedly, but each time, despite his immaculate precision, the space he attacked was not that which his adversary occupied. Zoe stood motionless, mocking him with her smile. His attacks remained steady. He was calm, confident. Her effect wouldn’t last much longer, and he seemed to know it. He showed no anger, no fear. Zoe wanted him to be afraid. She wanted him to regret what he’d done. But his eyes were empty. She hated him.

His blade found its target.

Zoe shouted, and the sound sent a shockwave through the quiet freighter. The assassin was bombarded with sound, a sonic boom blasting him against the wall once more. Bones cracked and flesh tore. He lay broken on the floor, barely conscious. The force his blade created, the matter it was made from, and the mystical properties of the blood it had been coated in were turned to sound. The silence was broken.

“I’ll blow you apart…” Zoe said, her fists clenched tightly, her eyes intently focused on the man that once made her feel weak.

Light dimmed. The air grew cold. Zoe drew on the energy of the light and heat, and on her own strength. The force of her last attack would be nothing. She would show him her power. The laws of physics meant nothing to her. The backlash that the paradox of her magic would create meant nothing to her. She reached out her right hand, ready to pour everything she had into one focused burst of sound.

A hand gripped her outstretched wrist. “What is it you think you’re doing?” Carolyn’s hand was frighteningly cold, and her gaze gave Zoe a chill. Solemn, piercing, unwavering.

“I… He…” Zoe muttered shakily. She was caught off guard, her focus broken.

Carolyn’s gaze was inescapable. “Explain yourself.”

“You said he was dangerous…”

“I did.”

“I’m stopping him…” Zoe said defensively, trailing off.

“Are you?”

“What…?”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

“Yes…”

“You’re stopping a dangerous vampire?”

Zoe nodded slowly.

“So that he can’t hurt anyone else?”

Another nod.

“Because it looks like,” Carolyn said, anger in her voice, “you’re trying to kill someone out of hate.”

Zoe stared.

“You think he deserves it?”

“You… don’t?”

“Of course he does,” Carolyn said as if it was obvious.

“Then why-” Zoe started.

“You think you need to punish him?” Carolyn interrupted.

“I…” Zoe wanted to look away.

“Because he deserves it?”

“Yes…”

“No!” Carolyn yelled, shaking Zoe’s arm. “Because you want it! This isn’t about him at all.”

“Of course it is…”

“No, it’s about you needing someone to blame.”

“But he is to blame!”

“It doesn’t matter. You just want someone to punish, guilty or not. Why?”

“But he is guilty…”

“Tell me why!” She shook the young girl’s arm again.

“Because… I have to do something…”

“And if you don’t?”

Zoe didn’t want to answer.

“You’ll be powerless,” Carolyn answered for her.

Zoe paused, unable to escape. Finally, she nodded.

“You’re afraid to be weak?”

“I guess…”

“To forgive is not weakness,” Carolyn said, smiling. “Weakness is being unable to let go. To hold on to retribution as a crutch to make you feel better. It takes strength to forgive. It doesn’t matter if they deserve it or not. It’s about your strength, your ability to accept what happened.” Carolyn let go of the young mage’s wrist. “So, do you have real strength?”

Zoe took a deep breath, considering her friend’s words. She looked at the broken form of her hated enemy. “Let’s go,” she said after a minute.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah… I just want to go home.”

"You go ahead," Carolyn smiled, then turned to the assassin, stepping forward. "I still have a job to finish."

"Wait," Zoe said, confused. "What happened to forgiveness?"

"He still needs to be stopped. It just has to be for the right reason." Carolyn turned to look back at Zoe, "go home. You don't need to see this."

***********

Back on the dock, Zoe looked up at the full moon, letting the light fill her eyes.


End file.
